READIN

READIN started out as a place for me
to keep track of what I am reading, and to learn (slowly, slowly)
how to design a web site.

There has been some mission drift
here and there, but in general that's still what it is. Some of
the main things I write about here are
reading books,
listening to (and playing) music, and
watching the movies. Also I write about the
work I do with my hands and with my head; and of course about bringing up Sylvia.

The site is a bit of a work in progress. New features will come on-line now and then; and you will occasionally get error messages in place of the blog, for the forseeable future. Cut me some slack, I'm just doing it for fun! And if you see an error message you think I should know about, please drop me a line. READIN source code is PHP and CSS, and available on request, in case you want to see how it works.

Eternal present/in memoriam

we mortals are present, and die but once,
I hear you say, and die a bit each day.
we mortals are present, we die but once,
and half the time it is in vain;
our ticking hours and years crawl past us
marked with Adam's stain

we mortals are present, we die but once
and God's outside of time and there's a line
between the mortal and divine, outside of time.
"God's presence" (is) our mortal past and future
which do not exist, oh let them not exist
we plead
and let us die but once
we plead
and pass outside of time
our meter, rhyme connecting memories and ashes
and our second nervous passage out of this
connective sibilance eternal disenmomented
reflected crashing echoes die
and dust and endlessness

(from an open thread elsewhere, "Any thoughts about proper spelling of hypothetical words? I'm trying to create a verb disenmoment (usally with a passive inflection, i.e. "disenmomented", "taken out of the moment") but am going back and forth on whether it "ought to" be spelt with a nm or a double m -- this latter was my initial impulse but when I read it I repeatedly tripped over the three adjacent em's of disemmomented -- a friend suggested replacing the first with an n and that does seem to break it up nicely, so my opinion is currently that the one I posted is the hypothetically correct construction.")

his story still untold, it's full of silent fury
and significance and void
mute like some magnificent android and so
the idiot recounts, he counts
he builds up poetry and mountains
crumbling pottery
shards of steel, distant voices
silent fountains
see him stuttering and pale and seeking
shelter from the storm of sorrow
shattering, resonant, freaking out
about the null tomorrow
and his idiotic legacy
comatose, potential
inside the eyelids snaky purple patterns weave all hectic and the
syllables shift and merge electric
inside the idiot's eyelids